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Agent Orange Victims Get Scientology Treatment

A Vietnamese Air Force soldier at the entrance to a dioxin-contaminated area at Da Nang airport, a former American air base.Credit
Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

BANGKOK — The Vietnamese government is treating some people exposed to Agent Orange, the defoliant sprayed by American troops during the Vietnam War, using a detoxification method developed by the founder of the Church of Scientology, according to doctors involved in the program.

Nguyen Ba Vuong, a doctor at the Vietnam Military Medical University in Hanoi, said his facility had received “training and methods” from the Association for Better Living and Education, an organization that is financed by Scientologists and the Church of Scientology, according to the association’s Web site.

About 300 people from the northern province of Thai Binh have passed through the program, which involves taking vitamins and minerals, performing strenuous exercise and sweating in a sauna, among other activities, according to Vietnamese news reports.

The aim of the Vietnamese program is to purge the body of dioxin, a toxic contaminant of Agent Orange that has been linked by some researchers to cancers, birth defects and other diseases. A spokeswoman for the Association for Better Living and Education confirmed the program.

The detoxification program, which Tom Cruise and other prominent Scientologists have promoted, is known as the Purification Rundown or the Hubbard method, after L. Ron Hubbard, the American science fiction writer who founded Scientology.

A clinic in New York City offered treatment based on the same program to firefighters who responded to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center.

But some doctors and researchers questioned whether such a treatment would work to remove toxins like dioxin that can persist in the body for many years.

“I would not expect that it would lower the body burden of dioxin in a given person,” said Dr. Marcella L. Warner, a research epidemiologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies the long-term health effects of dioxin exposure. While unfamiliar with the specifics of the detoxification program in Vietnam, she said that a treatment focused on exercise and sweating would not be an effective way to rid the body of the toxin.

Photo

Nguyen Ngoc Phuong, 31, an employee of the Da Nang Association of Victims of Agent Orange. Recently, the United States began a program to clean up the soil at the former American air base.

Christopher Hodges, a spokesman for the American Embassy in Hanoi, said the United States government was also skeptical of the detoxification program. “We are not aware of any safe, effective detoxification treatment for people with dioxin in body tissues,” he said. “The best way to reduce health risks associated with dioxin is to prevent human exposure to dioxin.”

The United States government has not provided any financing for the program in Vietnam, he said.

It is unclear if the Vietnamese government knew of such questions when it embarked on the program.

Hoang Manh An, the director of the Hanoi 103 Military Hospital, where the program is being carried out, appeared enthusiastic when interviewed last week by Tuoi Tre, a Vietnamese newspaper.

“This Hubbard method has been applied in many countries for detoxication and treatment of several diseases,” Dr. An was quoted as saying. “Vietnam is the first nation in the world to apply it to dioxin.”

But reached by telephone on Tuesday, he said information about the program would not be available until an official announcement at an undisclosed date in the future.

Karin Pouw, a spokeswoman for the Church of Scientology, did not specifically address the use of Mr. Hubbard’s program for dioxin, but said it “has had many applications” and had been used “for more than three decades to handle environmental toxins, exposure to pesticides and drug rehabilitation.”

Twenty-four residents of the central city of Da Nang whose blood was found to have high concentrations of dioxin were expected to travel to Hanoi this week to undergo the treatment, according to Nguyen Thi Hien, chairwoman of the Da Nang Association of Victims of Agent Orange.

Last month the United States began a program to clean up the soil at a former American air base in Da Nang, the first major program by the United States to address the legacy of Agent Orange since the end of the Vietnam War. Many Vietnamese believe their health problems, and the birth defects of their children, were caused by exposure to the defoliant. The Vietnamese government has cooperated with the Association for Better Living and Education since 2005, when the association provided financial help “to build steam baths and buy the vitamins and minerals,” according to the Vietnamese state news media.

Dr. Vuong said Tuesday that the association had helped “transfer technology on detox and purification.”

“They are not preaching religion,” he said.

J. David Goodman contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on September 6, 2012, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Agent Orange Victims Get Scientology Treatment. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe